Investors also have said that they have moved more of their trading into the dark because they have grown more distrustful of the big exchanges like the N.Y.S.E. and the Nasdaq. Those exchanges have been hit by technological mishaps and become dominated by so-called high-frequency traders.

But the biggest factor pushing trading away from the public exchanges is the ongoing decline in volatility in stock prices, traders say. When share prices are rising or falling sharply, investors want to quickly and reliably get their trade done, leading to a preference for the safety of an exchange. In calmer trading, on the other hand, the anonymity of dark pools is more attractive. What’s more, dark pools are generally cheaper to use than an exchange.

Other places besides the 30-plus dark pools are stealing the business of stock exchanges. A handful of firms including Citigroup and Knight Capital pay retail brokers like TD Ameritrade and Scottrade for the opportunity to trade with ordinary retail investors before the orders can reach an exchange, a phenomenon known as internalization. This type of off-exchange trading has also been growing, in part because of the recent revival of interest in the stock market among ordinary investors.

In recent weeks, internalization has accounted for about 60 percent of off-exchange trading and dark pools for about 40 percent.

The complicated structure of the stock markets makes it hard to get reliable numbers on the exact amount of trading going on in the different entities. Some operators of dark pools say that the most widely used numbers misrepresent the amount of trading going on in the dark, and ignore the fact that on public exchanges some types of trading happen out of the public eye…..

After an intense, fast-paced start to the Midwest Regional final, everyone in Lucas Oil Stadium stopped with 6:33 left in the first half when Louisville guard Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome low right leg injury near the Cardinals’ bench.

With Louisville leading 21-17, Ware ran out to contest a three-point attempt by Tyler Thornton. Moments after Thornton made the shot, however, there was pandemonium on the court when Ware planted his leg, turned and suffered what looked like a broken bone.

If you’re spending this weekend working out the seating chart to your wedding, next political fund-raiser, or other social event, an important note: do not seat Jim Carrey next to, or anywhere near Fox News. (While you have your note pad out, remind Justin Bieber that the dress code is “shirt required,” and Downton Abbey alum Dan Stevens will take the vegan option.) After the comedy actor released a Funny or Die video this week (below) mocking the N.R.A. and its late president Charlton Heston—in character as a country singer—Fox News has spent the rest of the week mocking Carrey on-air.

One Fox correspondent particularly devoted to the Carrey coverage is The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld, who called Carrey “a moral coward.” Gutfeld, who, it should be noted, has not starred in beloved comedies such asAce Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber, questioned Carrey’s taste in humor: “He thinks this is biting satire? Going after rural America and a dead man?” He called Carrey “the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth,” adding for good measure, “I hope his career is dead.”

Carrey, admittedly losing his cool on WhoSay, responded, “‘Cold Dead Hand’ is abt u heartless motherf%**ers unwilling 2 bend 4 the safety of our kids. Sorry if you’re offended by the word safety!” Since the message, Carrey has released a calmer statement about Fox, or, as he refers to the cable channel, “Fux.”

Working out hungry burns more fat.

Want to burn more fat when you work out? Exercise in the morning before you eat, says a new, small study conducted on men. Some weight-loss experts have believed for a while that exercising on an empty stomach can increase fat loss, but this is the first study to show that working out hungry doesn’t cause people to eat more later in the day. In fact, researchers found that those who ran on an empty stomach burned almost 20 percent more fat compared with those who had eaten prior to jogging. But researchers say you should ease into the routine. “If you’re not used to working out hungry in the morning, start with shorter sessions, building up from 20 minutes to one hour,” recommends study author Javier Gonzalez.

Congress, it appears, has gone and outsourced its job to the lobbyists. Explicitly. New York Senator Chuck Schumer has said outright that he and his colleagues would wait on a recommendation from the AFL-CIO, representing the Democratic voice, and the Chamber, for conservatives, before touching the guest-worker issue themselves.

And from a strategic perspective, that makes a grim sort of sense. George W. Bush’s 2007 attempt at reform was doomed in part by a clash between business and labor. Nobody wants to hit that iceberg again, and getting the two sides to the table ahead of time is nothing if not efficient. Same goes for having them talk directly to each other, rather than through their preferred elected officials…..

Actually John Podhoretz maintains that the nation’s President is a ‘serious’ man…..

In his April piece Podhoretz goes on top point out several accomplishment’s of the President and points to the disarray of the Republicans’ , saying that for better or worst the President is Not ‘over his head’…..

I’d tend to agree with the man, but the fact the Republicans HAVE been able to bloc the President on a good amount of HIS agenda does say something about Barack H. Obama ……

One would guess that Podhoretz , like the rest of us, is tired of all the fighting up on Capitol Hill….

And would like to see some governing…..

Barack Obama is a serious man. Yes, he likes to golf, and yes, he ran a campaign with cutesy Facebook pictures and seemingly inane Flash slideshows like “Life of Julia.” No, he does not seem interested in the mechanics of legislation, nor does he seem adept at negotiation. But the weird condescension his opponents display toward him is ludicrously wrongheaded. They seem eager to believe he is a lightweight, and he is not. Obama is very possibly a world-historical political figure, and until those who oppose him come to grips with this fact, they will get him wrong every time.

The common idea during his first term—peddled by, among others, Mitt Romney as he sought a way to criticize the president that would not offend too many people—that Obama “is a nice guy but in over his head” is entirely backward. Barack Obama almost certainly isn’t a nice guy (even his admiring biographers are consistent in describing his friendlessness and icy hauteur).

And you should only be in over your head so much. After a single statewide election, Obama has now won absolute majorities in two successive national tallies with a combined vote total of 135 million. He has much of the media in his pocket; he has his party in his thrall; he escapes responsibility for failures that would sink other politicians; he muscled the most important piece of legislation in decades into law; and with a 20 percent increase in federal spending levels, he has ended the political age in which a Democrat would say “the era of big government is over” (Bill Clinton, 1996).

The New York Metro Cardinal Timothy Dolan exalts his church to reach out more to gays and lesbians……

“We gotta do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people. And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that. We try our darndest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody,” he said in an interview to be aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”.

But Archbishop of New York said he wasn’t sure how that outreach might work.

“I don’t know. We’re still trying. We’re trying our best to do it. We gotta listen to people,” he said. “Jesus died on the cross for them as much as he did for me.”

But Dolan, who recently participated in the conclave that elected Pope Francis, reiterated his position that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman.

The states from Virginia to Texas are NOT having the Fede’s pay for Medicaid expansion for their citizens….These states by and large are the nation’s poorest ……And are Republican anchor states….

And folks this IS about politics and NOT about care….

As with the Stimulus Money lets see how long this lasts….

Widening Medicaid insurance rolls, a joint federal-state program for low-income Americans, is an anchor of the law Obama signed in 2010. But states get to decide whether to take the deal, and from Virginia to Texas – a region encompassing the old Confederacy and Civil War border states – Florida’s Rick Scott is the only Republican governor to endorse expansion, and he faces opposition from his GOP colleagues in the legislature. Tennessee’s Bill Haslam, the Deep South’s last governor to take a side, added his name to the opposition on Wednesday.

Haley [ South Carolina] offers the common explanation, saying expansion will “bust our budgets.” But the policy reality is more complicated. The hospital industry and other advocacy groups continue to tell GOP governors that expansion would be a good arrangement, and there are signs that some Republicans are trying to find ways to expand insurance coverage under the law.

Haslam told Tennessee lawmakers that he’d rather use any new money to subsidize private insurance. That’s actually the approach of another anchor of Obama’s law: insurance exchanges where Americans can buy private policies with premium subsidies from taxpayers.

Yet for now, governors’ rejection of Medicaid expansion will leave large swaths of Americans without coverage because they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid as it exists but not enough to get the subsidies to buy insurance in the exchanges. Many public health studies show that the same population suffers from higher-than-average rates of obesity, smoking and diabetes – variables that yield bad health outcomes and expensive hospital care.

“Many of the citizens who would benefit the most from this live in the reddest of states with the most intense opposition,” said Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Mediciad excahnge start ups are funded by the Fed’s when they start…..but that is up against this……

A South Carolina legislator put it bluntly earlier this year. State Rep. Kris Crawford told a business journal that he supports expansion, but said electoral math is the trump card. “It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party,” he said……

Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. It occurs during the Spring; (Or Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.) in March or April; the method for determining the date of Easter Sunday is complex, based on lunisolar calendar.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, as well as by its position in the calendar. In many European languages, the words for “Easter” and “Passover” are etymologically related or homonymous. The term “Pascha“, from the same root, is also used in English to refer to Easter.

Mrs. Clinton’s post-government life is so new that she is barely off her State Department health care plan. The Iowa caucuses are at least 33 months away. But that has not dissuaded a network of former campaign staff members and volunteers from starting a political action committee, “Ready for Hillary,” dedicated to what they hope will be her 2016 run.

Nor has it stopped major polling outfits like the one at Quinnipiac University from seeing how she would do in a presidential contest against two Republican contenders from Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio. In a Quinnipiac poll conducted two weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton thrashed both by 11 percentage points in their home state.

Nor has it kept advisers to some of her potential Democratic rivals from seeking out the smallest of clues to divine her intentions: Was she “chilly” to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York at the Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua last spring? Could she possibly run for president when she is buying a vacation house in the Hamptons? (Aides said reports that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were looking for multimillion-dollar summer properties at the swell end of Long Island were, in fact, inaccurate.)

Adding to her rivals’ anxiety, a new report emerges almost weekly from a Democratic dinner party in New York or Washington that Important So-and-So heard from Still-More-Important So-and-So that she is absolutely, positively running — only to draw swift rebuttals from her representatives that she has decided nothing of the sort.

“There’s this kind of, ‘I’m telling you a secret that she told me secretly,’ but there’s no secret to tell,” said Mrs. Clinton’s longtime communications aide, Philippe Reines. “Everyone’s gotten way ahead of themselves, and most importantly, they have gotten way ahead of her.”

This guy until this day has believed he was right in pulling fast one’s on his boss, The President of the United States…..

In supporting his Chief of Staff who helped him put his boss out on a limb….

In supporting the then Defense Secretary when he screwed up US Defense policy and his Department and the people who worked close for him….

The piece clearly points to President Bush making the wrong choice in Cheney, but worst in letting Cheney run his OIWN show that almost cost Bush a second term….And kept a war going…..and doing things illegal to boot….

Seriously….

This Showtime piece should mandatory for any incoming President on how to NOT let your Vice President run amok….

Both guided young, inexperienced protégés to the brink with unflappable certitude, self-assurance and an unsettling monotone. They were so persistent and persuasive that it was almost a shock when it turned out that each had an idée fixe that could burn down the house, or, in Mr. Cheney’s case, whole countries.

That’s not the overt message of this documentary, which will be broadcast Friday on Showtime and was made by R. J. Cutler, a producer of “The War Room” and director of “The September Issue.” This film, a long interview with Mr. Cheney interspersed with news clips and journalists and biographers, isn’t an exposé or an indictment, nor is it the kind of spooky character study that Errol Morris made of Robert S. McNamara in “The Fog of War.”

Mostly, it’s a self-portrait in black and white that is subsequently colored in by a Greek chorus of journalists and biographers and a narrator who sounds omniscient because it’s Dennis Haysbert, who once played the president on “24” and is the voice of Allstate Insurance.

“The World According to Dick Cheney” has interesting insights and revealing moments, but for critics who long to confront Mr. Cheney it may prove dissatisfying, because it allows him to make astonishing assertions without direct contradiction or follow-up questions.

Most notably, Mr. Cheney defends his position on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq war and the use of waterboarding with his usual aplomb and deft obfuscation. Other key players, including George W. Bush, have acknowledged mistakes and expressed dismay over decisions that proved misguided. Mr. Cheney says he did nothing wrong and has no regrets.

The justice’s of the United States Supreme Court found themselves in a uncomfortable place last week….

They where being asked to past judgment on same-sex marriage….

That is when the public and media have been riding a wave that changed the whole view on the issue from one of what you or I might be comfortable of to an issue of civil rights…

Even Republicans are now in a corner as people they know and love and even parts of their family come out of the closet to declare their sexual preference….

Now before all this…

No one much cared WHO you found to care about…

But with awaking that loving someone of your own sex could and would be held against you isn’t right …

The issue of gays and their marriage has become much more than sex….

America is a changing place….

In just a few years a President against same-sex marriage has changed his mind and dragged his country along with him….and that includes the Supreme’s….Who this week where heard to be asking out-loud ….’who got us into this?’

New York’s highest court rejected arguments Thursday by two Internet retailers that they should be exempt from collecting state sales tax.

Amazon.com, the biggest online store, and its much smaller competitorOverstock.com had separately sued to challenge a 2008 state law that required online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases made by New York residents. That served effectively to raise prices on the sites by nearly 10 percent, reducing their competitive advantage against brick-and-mortar retailers.

In a statement, Amazon denounced the New York Court of Appeals ruling as conflicting with precedents by the United States Supreme Court and decisions by other state courts. Overstock said it was considering appealing to the federal Supreme Court…..

From the inception of the Internet until the late 1990s, the Internet was free of regulation by government in the United States at all levels, and also free of any specially targeted tax levies, duties, imposts, or license fees.[citation needed] By 1996, however, that began to change, as several U.S. states and municipalities began to see Internet services as a potential source of tax revenue.

The 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act halted the expansion of direct taxation of the Internet, grandfathering existing taxes in ten states. In the United States alone, some 30,000 taxing jurisdictions could otherwise have laid claim to taxes on a piece of the Internet. The law, however, did not affect sales taxes applied to online purchases. These continue to be taxed at varying rates depending on the jurisdiction, in the same way that phone and mail orders are taxed.

The enactment of this legislation has coincided with the beginning of a period of spectacular Internet growth. Its proponents argue that the benefits of knowledge, trade, and communications that the Internet is bringing to more people in more ways than ever before are worth the tax revenue losses, if any, and that the economic and productivity growth attributable to the Internet may well have contributed more revenues to various governments than would otherwise have been received. Opponents, on the other hand, have argued that the Internet would continue to prosper even if taxed, and that the current federal ban on Internet-specific levies denies government at all levels a much-needed source of revenue.

It must be emphasized that the absence of direct taxation of the Internet does not mean that all transactions taking place online are free of tax, or even that the Internet is free of all tax. In the United States, nearly all online transactions are subject to one form of tax or the other. The Internet Tax Freedom Act merely precludes states in the United States from imposing their sales tax, or any other kind of gross receipts tax, on certain online services. For example, a state may impose an income or franchise tax on the net income earned by the provider of online services, while the same state may be precluded from imposing its sales tax on the gross receipts of that provider. In addition, as noted above, the Internet Tax Freedom Act does not prevent taxation of the sale of goods through the Internet…..